The Necromancer's Seduction (12 page)

“I can find it on my own,” I said, licking the last dribble of onion juice off my
fingers.

The two demons exchanged a look.

“Have you met this necromancer before?” Damon asked.

“No, but my grandmother knew him.”

Ewan stood with me and took my hand. “Call us if you run into any problems.”

I nodded and made for the subway, giving him one last glance over my shoulder. I’d
come here with Ewan, counting on getting information from Arthur about Cael, but doubts
began nagging at me. I’d never met this man and only had Cora’s word he was a good
guy. But what if he wasn’t?

* * * *

Lower Manhattan might as well reside on another planet. Chinatown lacked the skyscrapers
and the sheer immensity of midtown, but the neighborhood is no less distinct. The
winding sidewalks and streets carry a history of toil, dreams, and blood, all imprinted
on the faces, the colors on the shop fronts, and on the bricks of the old tenements
converted to apartments and cramped restaurants.

I admired the variety of colorful green fruits I couldn’t name and vegetables of all
shapes for sale on the crowded sidewalks, but wrinkled my nose at the pungent smell
of dried fish. I loved eating Chinese food, but was happy to remain ignorant of the
ingredients that sizzled in a restaurant wok.

I stopped in front of a curio shop. Glass doors to the side bore small black letters—Clausen
Imports. Arthur wasn’t Chinese, but Cora had told me he’d lived in China, later moving
here and immersing himself in the pulse of these streets. I pressed the doorbell,
and the door clicked open.

Arthur waited for me at the top of the stairs. He shook my hand with both of his,
apparently having adopted many of the Chinese customs. “I’m pleased to receive the
granddaughter of Cora Montagne. I’m so sorry about her death.” He bowed his head then
snapped it back up and directed me into his apartment.

Honking cars and shouting voices penetrated the window encompassing one wall of the
warehouse-size room. The place was an indoor bazaar, only lacking hawkers to barter
over the multitude of trinkets, vibrant silk jackets, and pottery graced with colorful
dragons that covered any available table or shelf space.

I shoved aside a stack of newspapers and settled on the couch, picking up a smiling,
red lucky kitty with its left paw raised and placing it on the table in front of me.

Arthur sat across from me. His eyes flicked about the room, never resting on one spot.

“Do you want tea?” he asked, his eyes on the shelves behind me.

“Sure.”

He didn’t get up or make any move to fetch the tea. Arthur was strange, but I was
sure he’d heard me.

“Cael is a young necromancer like yourself, lived in Boston,” he said. “He disappeared.
No one in our community has heard from him in a few years. We hoped he’d disappeared
for good. Your grandmother knew his father.”

“Is Cael powerful?”

He tsked. “Cael has power, but he’ll never be great. His father was weak, could barely
raise a zombie.”

Those words sounded familiar. I’ve heard professors dismiss a student based on one
test score, not giving them another chance to prove themselves. Made me wonder how
often similar discouragement had penetrated Cael’s psyche.

He scratched his scalp, leaving small tufts of gray cotton wisp hair standing up.
“Cael let his power twist him. It happens often with necros who delve too deep in
the power, disrespect death. They either kill themselves or succumb to madness. His
abuses extracted a price from his soul.”

“What kind of abuses?”

“Murdering people to create zombies. It’s forbidden for a necromancer to kill for
the purpose of reanimation.” He tugged at his hair again, then waved his hand in front
of me. “You raised a supernatural revenant? Does anyone besides Malthus and the witch
know this?”

Only the entire supe community in San Francisco. “A few other supes.”

“Do the vampires know?”

“I would guess the grapevine has swung their way by now, but I don’t know for sure.”

He met my eyes for the first time since I’d arrived. “You must be careful. Others
will try to manipulate your power.” His face turned ashen. “Is he here?”

I creased my brow in confusion, and he clarified. “The revenant.”

“No.”

The color returned to his face. Soft footsteps approached, and a young girl, blond
hair lifeless as if she hadn’t ventured outside in months, held a tray bearing two
teacups and a teapot. She set the tray on the table between us and poured the tea.

I watched the steam rise from the cups and breathed in the green tea’s warm aroma.
I caught a glimpse of the girl’s vacant eyes and shifted in my seat to get a closer
look at her. Black veins pumped beneath her pale skin, but the smell . . . The green
tea masked it at first, but it didn’t escape my necro senses now.

I lost my thirst for the tea. I waited until she left the room to put my cup down.
“The girl, she’s—”

“Yes, she’s a revenant.” Arthur’s words carried a nervous titter. “My niece. Her parents
died when she was a child. I took care of her until a car hit her on the street. Nothing
more tragic than a young life cut off in her prime.”

And he’s sitting here talking to me about Cael being twisted from the power? I blinked.
The walls of the room closed in on me. I pulled out my phone in a pretense of checking
the time. “I should probably go. Ewan will be waiting for me.”

I came here wanting to pick Arthur’s brain for as much information as possible about
Cael, about controlling revenants and power spheres. But Arthur’s brain was mush,
and I wasn’t willing to sit here another minute and pretend the horror show didn’t
affect me.

His sunken eyes darted past me. “You think I’m crazy for turning Shayla into a revenant.”

No, I think you’re bat shit crazy. There’s a difference.

I stood and thanked him for his time. He sat rocking back and forth, staring out the
window. When he didn’t get up, I saw myself out.

I wandered across Canal Street and down a couple of blocks, eventually stumbling into
Little Italy. When I’d put enough distance between myself and Arthur’s import house
of madness, I texted Ewan with the location of a café wedged between two trattorias.
I ordered a cappuccino and waited, watching tourists eat cannoli and stroll down the
brick streets heavy with the smell of hot tomatoes.

A sheen of light next to a gelato stand caught my eye. I blinked. Ewan appeared seconds
later. I blinked again, expecting him to disappear, but he materialized next to my
table, taking the ten plus steps from the gelato stand in the time it took for me
to blink. I drank in the sight of him, and the tension oozed out of my body. “How
did you do that?” I asked.

“Do what?” He gave me a bemused smile, as if pleased with his parlor trick, but didn’t
elaborate. “Find out anything interesting?” he asked from the seat next to me.

I squeezed my nose with my fingers, shook my head in dismay, and told him about the
revenant niece. “If I ever, ever hint at bringing back a family member as a revenant
or anyone out of pity . . .” I drew in a ragged breath. “Make it painless.”

He placed his hand over mine. I was getting too used to his warmth. “That won’t happen
to you. You’re stronger than that.”

I stared at him, my eyes wide. I hoped so. “What about the demons?”

“They haven’t experienced any breaches, but I already knew that. My real purpose in
coming was to feel them out, see what position they’re holding on the chess board.”
He drummed his hands on the table. “Someone is definitely trying to wreak havoc.”

“I think that’s obvious. Question is why?”

* * * *

Back in the subway tunnel, Ewan touched the tiles of the portal, and the image of
the Golden Gate Bridge appeared before us. He clutched my hand tight. The muscles
in his neck stretched.

We stepped into the portal.

My feet fell beneath me. I flailed, trying to make contact with any type of surface.
The acrid smell of burnt flesh singed my nose, then terror seized my vital organs
when I no longer felt Ewan’s hand in mine.

My body hit water, the jarring splash stinging my skin. When I finally figured out
what the hell was going on, I directed my arms and legs to swim up. I broke the surface
of the water with a loud gasp. Screeches cracked the air. I tried to see around me,
but a white hot glare blinded me.

I hauled myself out of the water onto wet soil and crawled away. The gravity of my
situation hit me full force. If I didn’t find Ewan, I was stuck in the demon realm,
and my likelihood of surviving alone was remote. I shivered, my clothes sticking to
me in muddy gobs. My vision improved, allowing me to see shapes moving around. One
in particular stood in the distance, tall, surrounded by an aura of fierce energy.
Ewan?

Something wet wrapped around my ankle, knocking me down and dragging me back toward
the water. I dug my fingers into the muddy soil, but that was as useful as grasping
a stick of butter. I splashed back into the murky water. Whatever had hold of me pulled
me deeper at an alarming speed. Pressure squeezed my eardrums. I was never good at
holding my breath for extended periods.

My lungs tried to force air out through my mouth, but I pressed my lips together to
hold it in. Long, swaying vines surrounded me and wrapped around my body, a slimy
gauze for a mummy’s corpse. I thrashed my limbs, but the water absorbed my adrenaline-fueled
bursts, mocking my panic and shock.

I had a few precious seconds left before my lungs burst. A black mass floated past
and caught on the vines. I squinted in the murk at what appeared to be a dead demon
creature with black liquid spewing from a gash on its serpentine body. Something on
the surface was killing demons. I hoped it was Ewan.

Could I possibly? No time like the present to find out. I ignored my burning lungs
and touched my power. It fizzled, a flat soda bottle. I screamed a scream no one could
hear, releasing my remaining air in a flurry of frantic bubbles.

Drowning is a horrible way to die. It’s a conscious death, unlike a car wreck where
death steals life in an instant. My lungs struggled to take a breath I refused to
take, and my heart pumped in a survival instinct that was killing me. All the Montagne
women, dead within a decade.

No. Not like this.

I clawed at the vines. My lungs contracted, taking in water, making me convulse and
choke against the invasion. Blackness skirted along my vision and something else,
suffusing me . . .
yes
.

The potency surged. I flailed and managed to touch the creature’s slimy skin at its
wound and directed my power into its body. I blinked against the blackness overtaking
my vision. My last thought before I lost consciousness was to command the creature
to get me the fuck out of this cesspool.

I woke with my throbbing head on Ewan’s lap, my lungs aching with each breath.

“I tried to reach you—” His concern washed over me. He smoothed wet strands of my
hair from my face.

I basked for a moment in the sensation, then pushed myself up, rubbing my temples.
“What happened?”

“They were waiting for us.”

“They?”

“Assassins.”

It was at that moment I noticed Ewan’s silk shirt shredded down to a single ribbon
around his waist. My heart flip-flopped as my eyes scorched a path up his chest, revering
the muscles carved with all the right indentations in all the right places. I met
his stare, a stare that provoked, that challenged my resistance.

I tore my gaze from his and scanned the area, remembering. “Ewan where’s . . .?”

“Oh, you mean your new zombie pet? He’s quite enamored of you. I almost had to kill
him a second time, but he calmed down after I convinced him I wasn’t going to hurt
you.”

“What is it?” I gaped at the creature that slithered closer on tiny legs, resembling
a salamander but with a flat head more like a cobra’s.

“His name is Myyr. These guys are pretty nasty mercenary types. It’s amazing you have
one under your control.”

Myyr lifted his head, which was rimmed by a band of blue scales. He opened his mouth
and hissed, showing off two sets of dripping fangs.

“Who knew . . . a demon creature zombie,” I said in disbelief.

I closed my eyes, ready to send the creature back to death when Ewan stopped me with
a hand on my arm. “Wait. He might come in handy. Can you leave him here?”

“I suppose. Why?”

“Guard dog. He may be able to give us information about the portal breach.” He shifted
his attention from Myyr to me. “Are you feeling okay?”

“My vision’s still blurry, and my lungs hurt, but I’m alive.”

“You appear to be weathering time in the demon realm without too many ill effects.
Most humans don’t last long, but supernaturals last longer, so maybe that explains
your resistance. Either way, we need to get you out of here.”

“So what happens? Why can’t non-demons stay for a long time?”